On Tuesday the 24th of March, the University of Edinburgh officially launched its new Regenerative Sustainability strategy, celebrated in McEwan Hall. This strategy comes as a replacement to the climate strategy, which had been effective from 2016.
This is much needed, as climate action is not one of the university’s strong points according to students, despite the fact that the institution was ranked 4th in the world by the 2026 QS World University Rankings in Sustainability. A recent poll issued by The Student, investigating how students view sustainability at the university, revealed that only 2.5 per cent of respondents believe enough is being done in terms of sustainability and environmental protection.
The Student had the opportunity to discuss this with Mr Scott Davidson, the head of Sustainability and Deputy Director of the Social Responsibility and Sustainability (SRS) branch at the University of Edinburgh.
Mr Davidson noted that the university has met the carbon goals set by the previous strategy but is off track in terms of its absolute carbon emissions in relation to achieving Net Zero. He states: “the [present] pace of change is not commensurate to the challenges we face, we need to accelerate, which is what the new strategy in part is designed to achieve.” He also pointed out that the previous strategy, like most traditional sustainability strategies, was primarily focused on reducing operational, estate-based carbon, but ignored impacts related to the supply chain, such as resource depletion, and impacts on water and chemical pollution. It also did not tackle the areas of highest potential impact such as teaching, research and innovation.
The new strategy is thus based on IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) recommendations, with interim targets based on 5-year carbon budgets. This should allow a constant, and progressive reduction in all scopes of emissions.
The present goal is to lower emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, from a 2018/19 baseline. Mr. Davidson accentuates the challenge and ambition behind this new target: “This 43 per cent reduction represents a 20-fold acceleration in our rates of decarbonisation, (…) this is serious ambition.”
Currently, the biggest contributors to the university’s emissions are from the supply chain, followed by travel, and then estate-based emissions. The strategy thus plans to leverage three main aspects to achieve this: reducing building and estate emissions, reducing transportation emissions and promoting education and research.
Universities trade in knowledge. Learning, teaching and research are the supply and demand fuelling institutions such as our own. The new strategy brings these to the forefront. Davidson believes, “The greatest impact our university can have on the world is through its students, and through its research and innovation.” This undoubtedly pedagogical perspective should soon be instrumentalised, with a commitment that, “ensures all students can access meaningful study of climate and nature, regardless of degree chosen, while training thousands of staff and students every year to address this multidimensional crisis.”
Mr Davidson stresses that this new strategy was something “developed by the community, for the community, and delivered by the community.” In addition to EUSA members, who were consulted and involved, other students were also welcomed to work with the SRS team, with some having contributed to the drafting of the new strategy. Yet, the aforementioned poll also reveals that 43 per cent of sampled students had never heard about the university’s sustainable strategies and Net Zero goals.
Considering the above, the fact that 88 per cent of respondents believe that there is not enough communication regarding climate action and environmental protection at the university, is unsurprising.
While these astonishingly low figures could hint at a lack of interest or engagement from students when it comes to environmental action, most respondents did communicate their wish for the university to do more, with more than half taking the time to elaborate their opinions, giving action proposals and expressing their concerns with specific examples.
We presented Davidson with these figures, which thus suggest a lack of communication on sustainability-related initiatives from the university’s side. How can we bridge the gap between what the university does and what students think it does?
Communication has certainly been a head-scratcher – Mr. Davidson explains: “Traditional forms of communication, (…) including social media, are having increasingly limited impact on reaching and engaging students in issues, particularly in post-Covid environments. We have tried workshops, putting on free food, engaging through EUSA, working with sabbatical officers, and nothing has given us the kind of engagement we would like. So, how do we cut through a noisy communication environment? (…) There are no easy answers, (…) but it is a challenge we are trying to resolve.”
There are many difficulties in increasing climate initiatives’ outreach, as many fall into a spiral of preaching to the converted – the students who will respond to communication efforts are often the ones who already engage with these issues and the bodies made to address them. Mr. Davidson is aware that of this and says he is working to find new ways to communicate.
Despite these efforts, two students who are part of the Earth Fellows program – which enables students to work with climate experts and policy makers at the university – reiterated the issue: “We study environment-related degrees, yet had never heard about the existence of many of these sustainability programs. A lot of things are put in place, but students don’t engage with them because there is no proper advertising.”
Hopefully, this advertising is something that should increase as more opportunities are put in place. One such example is the new ‘Sustainability Rewards App’ which aims to grant vouchers to students who exhibit sustainable lifestyle behaviours. Over 1,500 staff and students have signed up since last year.
Taking advantage of The Student’s poll, many students expressed their, often valid, concerns with the new sustainability strategy. We asked Mr. Davidson about some of these concerns.
When asked about the university’s finances and funding used for the implementation of the new strategy, Davidson reassured that: “We are not going to have to increase fees specifically to pay for sustainability strategies. The university must decide how to spend its available income across the different strategic priorities, such as (…), ensuring that we continue to have world-leading research facilities. It is not helpful to juxtapose sustainability against other critical services. (…) Sustainability is not disposable.”
The question of AI-usage related emissions came up often in the poll, but seems to have been somewhat disregarded by the new strategy, as it is not explicitly mentioned. Mr. Davidson explains that it is hard to include all sources of emissions in the strategy, and that the university can contribute to this emerging complication by increasing research about the effects of AI, citing works by Edinburgh alumnus Hanna Ritchie.
Fears of greenwashing were also widespread across respondents, with one saying, “I have a theory the recycling bins are a scam (…) people just throw stuff into the first one they come across.”
To this, Mr. Davidson defended: “I probably hate greenwashing more than they do. (…) As a sector, we [Sustainability Representatives] need to get better at the way we communicate about this [sustainable action]. We are very good at pointing only at the things that we do well, (…) risking coming across as inauthentic. This is a missed opportunity, particularly in this time of global politics, where trust is so important.”
He gives positive examples: the university has made considerable progress in decarbonising investments, and the Forests and Peatland program is a huge, growing achievement, which should enable the institution to offset the carbon that cannot be reduced, helping reach Net Zero by 2040. Also, the university managed to reduce its electricity consumption by 9 per cent in 2025.
But, two things Davidson notes should be improved are the emissions related to heating and powering estate buildings, and knowledge quality in regard to supply-chain emissions (scope 3 emissions), which, at present, have significant methodological problems. This risks a significant gap in the understanding of the university’s emission patterns.
The latter is quite surprising, as these scope 3 emissions account for more than 50 per cent of the university’s total emissions. It seems counterintuitive that we can make changes to drastically reduce our emissions when we have uncertainty as to what baseline we are working with.
It is important that students hold the university accountable. To this, Mr. Davidson requests: “Please do! Take the time to work with us, and to understand the work we’re trying to do.” He recommends communicating through EUSA, who have the power to make your voice heard in the higher, seemingly unreachable spheres of Edinburgh’s administration.
If this interview proved one thing, it is that there is both the desire and potential for change at our university. However, while some progress has been made, this is not across the board, there is little cohesion, and a steep change in action is required to address these gaps. When it comes to sustainability action, we must continue to “build bridges”, involving as many people as possible, from as many different backgrounds as possible.
We, who have the privilege to receive remarkable educations, must make sure this same privilege does not blind us, remove our comfy blinders, and do our part.